


The Second Letter

by elwenyere



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Deleted Scenes, Grief/Mourning, Kind of a Love Letter to Natasha Too Really, Love Confessions, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24260533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwenyere/pseuds/elwenyere
Summary: Deleted Scene from *Avengers: Endgame*, in which Tony reveals to Steve that he wasn't the only one who wrote a letter after Siberia.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66





	The Second Letter

Tony paused at the doorway, rotating the envelope in his hands nervously. Across the room, he could see Steve lean forward to put his head in his hands, his shoulders rising and falling slightly as he calmed his breathing. If it were any other day in the last five years, Natasha would have been the one to follow him. But Natasha was gone. And Tony knew Steve had retreated to the lounge to pull himself together after the emotional conversation on the dock – to try to master his grief before they attempted to finish her mission.

For a moment, Tony hesitated over what it would mean to drop the letter on Steve now of all times. Was he taking advantage of Steve’s vulnerability to try to force a confession he might never get otherwise? Was he risking a potentially fatal distraction right as they neared the end of this fight?

Maybe, he thought wryly to himself, but then again he’d never been able to be particularly careful where Steve was concerned. And hey, if they were about to rip apart the fabric of the universe, who could blame him for needing to balance just one more equation?

Tony knew Steve had probably heard him coming from down the hall, but he cleared his throat anyway as he made his way across the room. He hoped Steve heard it as an apology: a moment to compose himself, an acknowledgment that Tony was invading one of the rare periods when Steve let himself mourn. By the time Tony made it around the couch, Steve had straightened his back – not quite Captain-America rigid, but ready to go there if that’s who Tony needed.

The sight filled Tony with the simultaneous urge to shake Steve and to hold him. But that feeling was an old companion. He could run his finger over each moment he’d felt it like they were talismans.

_He was on the helicarrier, trying to provoke Steve into crying or yelling or doing anything other than feeling sorry for him over Coulson’s death._

_He was snarking about firewood: annoyed that Steve was perfectly fine after Wanda’s vision, anxious that he might not be._

_He was watching Steve get the news about Peggy Carter, searching his mental storehouse for all the WWII gear or old SHIELD mementos he owned – anything that might bring Steve’s past back to him for just a second._

_He was giving Steve his father’s pens and watching Steve walk away from him._

_He was crawling out of his skin because he’d dropped the ball, lost the Tesseract, and possibly blown the whole mission and everyone’s chance at happiness, and he wanted Steve to yell at him (he would do anything to stop Steve from yelling at him), but instead Steve tensed his jaw and waited expectantly for Tony to figure it out._

Tony sat down, letting one arm rest across the back of the couch so that left his hand rested very lightly on Steve’s shoulder. Even though the hand holding the letter felt like it was itching with nerves, he wanted to let Steve break the silence first.

“When we were on the run from Hydra,” Steve said after a pause, “Natasha asked me if I would trust her to save my life. I keep seeing her face in that moment before I answered, that moment when she thought maybe I couldn’t trust her. I would give anything to tell her again how much I did.”

“She knew, Steve,” Tony replied. “Anyone who's ever fought with you two knew. Every time you called a shot in the field, you told her.”

Steve looked up at him, and meeting the fierceness of devotion in those eyes, Tony realized: if it had been the two of them on Vormir, Tony would have been over the cliff before Steve could blink, super-solider reflexes be damned.

Tony made an effort to breathe through that little tragically timed epiphany and dropped the envelope onto the couch before he could change his mind.

“Romanov wrote me a letter too, after Siberia. Did she tell you that?”

Steve shook his head.

“I figured,” Tony nodded. “When I got it, I thought she was writing to apologize for turning double agent on me again, but actually she mostly wanted to talk about you.”

Steve looked down at the envelope as if uncertain whether he should take it, finally settling for tracing Natasha’s handwriting across the exterior with his fingers.

“She told me – and I won’t pretend I didn’t memorize this section – it’s embarrassing, but you saw me hug my father this morning, so I think it’s safe to say the ship has sailed on its tour of Tony Stark’s Lingering Emotional Hang-Ups – she told me that Barnes was the only one who could hold your past with you. That she hoped she’d be able to help you face your future.”

Steve’s hand clenched over the envelope, and Tony paused and glanced toward the window to give him a minute of privacy. He knew what he was interrupting. He knew that Steve had let himself depend on Natasha, and he knew how rare that was. It had been one of the sore spots he'd liked to press on in the years after Siberia – the intimacy that let Steve and Natasha share in one quick glance an understanding that sometimes took him hours of verbal sparring to reach with Steve. But the pain of that bruise was different now. It also carried the years after the Snap, when Steve and Nat were holding it together for each other while Tony retreated with Pepper, the one person whose love he least associated with being an Avenger. 

He found himself remembering – so clearly he could almost feel it – the way Natasha’s hand had felt on his shoulder after their meeting with Ross. Ross had threatened to bring Steve in dead or alive, and Tony had tried to play off his panic with a joke, but Natasha had only needed one light pressure to tell him she saw through the act. She knew nothing scared Tony more than realizing he was going to have to fight Steve to save his life.

God, he’d been so hurt when she’d let Steve and Barnes go at the airport. Of course, he’d thought, of course she would always choose Steve, and I was an idiot to think her siding with me would ever be more than an act _._ He could remember all too well the way he’d thrown her past in her face to cover the pain of her turning on him. But he’d realized later that wasn’t quite it. Natasha had always been a better strategist than either of them when it came to the things that made people tick. Or, in this case, the things that made people explode. She knew Tony’s fear meant he’d do anything he thought would protect the team. She knew Steve’s guilt meant he couldn’t walk away from Barnes, even if everyone he loved – including Barnes – was begging him to back down. So she chose the side that she had to in order to keep them both alive. 

“She cared about you,” Tony continued finally, “in a way that – hey, I’ll admit it – made me pretty fucking jealous sometimes. Because she got you in a way that I couldn’t figure out, and I assumed with her and Barnes and Wilson you would have everything you needed. And so I didn't know what to make of it when she told me that even though Barnes held your past, and she would do her best to help you with your future, that she didn’t think anyone had shaped your present as much as I had. She said if I thought you had chosen Barnes over me, then I should stop pretending to be a genius. Because clearly I had no idea what it looked like when you were in love.”

Tony let his fingers tap a jittering beat across the back of the couch, trying to let some of his intensity out somewhere other than his face as he watched for Steve’s reaction.

“As you can imagine I wasn’t in a place to believe that letter at the time. I was pissed as hell, feeling pretty sorry for myself – and, you know, I had tried to murder your best friend. So I couldn’t figure out how to accept the words ‘Steve,’ ‘loves,’ and ‘me’ in that order. But I’ve grown wiser in recent years, and Natasha _was_ terrifyingly good at extracting intel, so –“

“Natasha was very smart,” Steve interrupted gently. His jaw had relaxed, softening enough to allow his lips to curl up into the suggestion of a smile as he looked at Tony. As if to counterbalance the change, Tony felt his own chest tightening as Steve loosened. But Steve held his eyes long enough for Tony to believe that – yes, that softness was for him.

“Damn,” Tony said. “So she was right. I should have called.”

Steve looked down again at his own hands and pressed them together for a moment as if undecided. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the flip phone. That goddamned flip phone, Tony thought, his stomach lurching at the memory of how many times he had played chicken with its twin.

“I should have believed you could forgive me,” Steve said. He brushed one finger across the surface of the phone. “There are about a hundred apologies in the drafts. And some other…confessions of what Nat had already told you I guess. When my phone finally rang, and it was Bruce’s voice on the other end instead of yours, I thought…” He closed his eyes briefly against the memory, and Tony found himself recalling Steve’s face when he returned from Titan – the rawness of his hope as he ran toward the ship and pulled Tony’s arm over his shoulder. “I was furious with myself for being such a coward. I thought I would never get to show you what you meant to me, because I was so afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”

“In your defense, I did pretty much exactly what you expected,” Tony said. “I seem to remember calling you a liar in front of all of Earth’s remaining superheroes and then metaphorically breaking my heart off into your hands.”

The self-deprecation tasted bitter in his mouth, and he could feel that his face had gone tight around the edges, but Steve gave another small smile.

“No one ever said you don’t have a flair for the dramatic,” he allowed. “But I’ve always admired that, Tony – your ability to show what you feel. And I needed it, too. When I came out of the ice, it felt like part of me tried to stay numb. But being around you, it was like a limb waking up. You were so alive, and you were always getting me moving, getting me out of my own head. Even when it felt like pins and needles, I knew I needed it. Needed it too much, maybe. I guess I’ve done some pretty shitty things because I was afraid of what would happen if you decided I wasn’t worth that effort – if you gave up on pushing me.”

Perhaps feeling that the phone was a reminder of one such shitty thing, Steve moved to slip it back in his pocket. Without time to reflect, Tony reached out to stop him, his fingers skirting down Steve’s arm as he dropped his hand from the back of the couch. Immediately afterwards, Tony realized it was his left hand, his wedding band now pressed into the top of Steve’s wrist. Steve looked at Tony’s hand, then up at Tony, his face utterly still except for the movement of his eyes. In for a penny, Tony thought ruefully to himself, and he swept his thumb gently across Steve’s palm.

“I didn’t,” he said, proud of how steady his voice sounded. “I didn’t give up, and neither did you. I know I told you there was no trust, but I was a liar too, obviously. Because you still came after me, and you still followed me. You still trusted me to do this.”

So tentatively it made something sweet and painful clench in Tony’s stomach, Steve shifted toward him, switching the phone into his other hand so that he could slip the device into Tony’s shirt pocket while laying the wrist Tony had taken on top of his knee, leaving their hands almost entwined.

“Always,” Steve said firmly. And Tony felt a rush of fond annoyance filling his chest.

“Couldn’t just let me have the last inspirational line, could you, Rogers?” he grinned. “You say I have a flair for the dramatic, but I swear, a guy tries to get in just one little mic drop around here…”

Steve gave him a real smile this time – of the shit-eating variety Tony had missed more than he would admit to a living soul.

“You love my speeches,” he smirked.

“God help me, I do,” Tony replied, rotating his wrist to take Steve’s hand in his.

Steve’s breath hitched just slightly, and Tony gave himself a moment to watch Steve’s eyes close, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Tony calculated how many years he had spent watching the smallest contractions and releases move across Steve’s body, how many times he had found himself doing everything he could to move him just a little more – needling, pushing, cracking jokes, cracking apart.

Maybe it wasn’t much – in the face of all the time they’d lost, the different paths they’d chosen – to tell each other finally what it had meant. But it was more than Tony ever thought he would get to hold.

“Come on,” he said finally, standing up and pulling Steve along with him by the hand. “Let’s go make Natasha proud.”


End file.
